The 47%: Own It, Mitt

(a number of updates below)

Mother Jones has the goods on Mitt Romney; based on a surreptitious video taken at a Boca Raton fundraiser.  And they are right - Mitt's money quote is big news:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax...


I'm stunned, myself.  Who the hell knew that Mitt Romney had such a hard-nosed conservative streak in him?  And why doesn't he say things like this more often?

And as for the feigned outrage...please.  I've seen the 45%-47% number bandied about everywhere from Kos to the New York Times - it's their starting point when going through election projections.  The fact is that the main purpose of easing welfare restrictions, granting asylum to illegals, and increasing access to food stamps is to push the percentage of government dependents to 50.1% - enough to ensure Democrats a permanent majority.  Well, until the money runs out, anyway.

Mitt has gotta own this statement, and get away from his pages of focus-group poll testing (which he pays homage to to in the Mother Jones piece).  He's been following their guidance for months, and he's falling behind one of the worst presidents in American history.  No surprise - bad data leads to bad results.

Time to throw the poll graphs aside, Mitt, and speak your mind.  You'll find in this toxic atmosphere you can attract more voters with vinegar than you can with honey...


UPDATE:  But the taste of irony certainly is sweet...

...the video was shot by Jimmy Carter’s currently-unemployed grandson...


UPDATE II:  The 47% are real, by the way...remember Miss Joseph??





UPDATE III:   "Romney Unplugged": The hits keep coming!
The nation that Mitt Romney has "gaffed" in dismissing the Palestinians as viable peacemakers shows you how out of touch Mother Jones, the media, and the Left is with the American people:

I'm torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I've had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish....
 Some might say, well, let's let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians...And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel....

....These are problems—these are very hard to solve, all right? And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, "There's just no way." And so what you do is you say, "You move things along the best way you can." You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. 

"The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world."


Sounds like a well-thought out alternative strategy to the Obama administration's failed "daylight" initiative.  How does David Corn over at Mother Jones react?  With subtle anti-semitism, and the "Israeli lobby" canard:

On his campaign website, Romney, whose foreign policy advisers include several neocons known for their hawkish support for Israel, does not explicitly endorse the peace process or a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


This is good stuff, Mitt. Own it...


UPDATE IV:  Rush asks the pertinent question...why wait so long to release a such a "damaging" video, when it was recorded on May 17th?  An "October surprise", perhaps, moved up hastily to pop smoke over the cascading failures of Barack Obama's foreign policy?

Well, they did gain a respite of a few days.  But like a huge witch-pimple on the tip of the nose, you can sing and dance all you want, but the attention always returns to the warts...